Well I made another discovery tonight. It's a discovery that makes me feel somewhat heavy hearted, like I just discovered my fathers most private secrets. It's so amazing that my sister Claudia and I don't recall hearing about our fathers war time experiences. We only knew he was a Chief and that he dedicated his life to serve our country. It's even more amazing that I am discovering his story almost thirty-eight years after his death. A few years ago while I was doing all this military research on my father Ed, I found a shipmate from the Boise still alive. His name was Joe Fenton. We spoke on the phone two or three times as he gave me information.
One week he sent me a package of typed papers and a photo of himself holding a shadow box full of medals. At the time I was more interested in his medals than the papers. Tonight I opened the package and read the papers. It was his story of being on the U.S.S. Boise and his personal feelings concerning the war. No wonder my father never spoke of the war.
Joe began his story by letting us know a little of what life on the ship was like. "Getting used to Navy was something else, Beans for breakfast on Sunday mornings, fall in to do this and march to do that, learning a new job"."The days went by quite fast as a lot was really going on, we were kept real busy". "Being in Hawaii was great. The big battleships all around us at Pearl Harbor, ships going in and out all the time". On November 18, 1941 we go under weigh, left Pearl, and later in the day met up with five freighters. We had no idea where we were going or what we were doing. We all strung out in a line and the days went by. About four days later, the captain told us where we were going, bound for Manila Philippines."December 1941" A week or so went by, we were steaming at about 12 knots, rather slow, but of course had slow freight ships with us, did not know at the time but later heard the ships were filled with workers going to Clark Air Base."
We had been at sea two weeks and one night at about mid-night, battle stations come over the loud speakers, bugle's blowing man your battle stations, what excitement, makes your blood pump fast, but being woke up from a sound sleep hearing that, man! Did not know what was going on, we were not at war, the ships all stopped and our gun turrets all trained out to port side. Suddenly we could see ships in the far distance. Just shadows passing slowly by, I mean dozens of them, who they were we didn't know, (we knew after December 7). The only reason they never saw us, we were on the dark side of the moon, we could see so clearly, because they were between us and the moon". "We sat there about four hours, not moving until we knew for sure they were gone. If they had seen us I wouldn't be writing this now, thank God it was in the days before radar was being used. " "We were at radio silence so couldn't call anyone and tell them what we had just seen. Anyway we started on our way and got in Manila December 6. Just in time for the ship to have liberty. We all got ashore, port side first night, then starboard side the next night, strange thing happened though our liberty's ended with us being back on board at midnight. As soon as all were on the ship at midnight, we left port that night, strange"."The next morning, December 8 we suddenly went to battle stations at about 8am. An announcement came over the loud speakers that Pearl Harbor was under attack. Almost immediately an announcement came back that Manila was under attack also, there we were just 8 hours out of harbor on our way to Cebu which was a couple of hours ahead of us (what to do)? In just hours we got word that we were at war with Japan".
JOE'S ACCOUNT OF THE BATTLE OF ESPERANCE
"You will have to understand a lot more went on than I can put down here. Some things I don't want to, Some thing's I have spent a lifetime trying to forget. All of the second deck was on fire, everyone forward of the bridge was dead, killed either by concussion, shell fire, or drown when they turned the water into the powder rooms. The three forward turrets were hit by direct shell fire, captains bridge blown apart, but before the 126 men died they knew we had done some damage." "Action from time we started to the end was twenty seven minutes. I found out later that we were firing by ourselves. That is why we took all the hits. The Japs thought we were alone. Well the "Galloping Ghost" as we called our ship lived! "Wed. Oct 13th all bodies were out of turrets now, terrible job, can't get to the bodies down below yet, as we have to be able to pump out the rooms. That afternoon we got the bodies sewn into bags and we had all hands not on watch stand aft and we buried them at sea, 64 men, took all afternoon".
"When we arrived in Santos all the ships at anchor gave us a cheer as we went by and dipped their flags. Now we had the terrible job of going down below and getting out those bodies. A few days later, after the bodies were buried on the land we up anchor, and left for the USA. We had to get repaired as there was a lot of war to fight yet."Joe's Account of the Invasion of Italy"The invasion was about to begin, we moved into towards the land off of Salerno Italy, and pounded away at the beaches. The Germans were attacking all day long and we were taking a heavy toll on them. The army started in, in there landing boats, and a lot of them were not making it. Finally Gen. Patton asked if we could do anything about a division of German tiger tanks just over the hill out of sight of the beach. They were shooting up the landing craft badly, we said sure could, if you give us a little fire support. So Patton put a Lt. up on a hill, this guy was good. He directed our gun fire and we knocked out the whole division. We got a presidential citation for that. (The whole ship)".
On the next wasn't too good. We shot down 28 of our own airplanes loaded with our own paratroopers, it was terrible, they came at dawn, weather cloudy, they gave us no recognition signal, had no knowledge of them coming. All the ship started firing, and we weren't missing much. They were flying low, could have been Germans, we didn't know. That night and the next morning bodies floated all around us. We were under heavy attack by the German Air Force." During all the shooting our sister ship pulled in between us and the shore where we were firing. We put a shell right into her. Soon there were no other jobs to do. We headed back to the states. What a reception we got as we pulled into N. Y.NEW GUINEA April 22, 1944"Thousands of troops went ashore today. Fighting went on all summer. Fight, rest, fight, rest. I am so sick of it. Death is always just around the corner or over the hill." (January 1, 1945)
"General McArthur came on board and stayed with us several weeks. He used us as his headquarters during the invasion of Luzon. We saw 450,000 men going ashore. What a sight! We were down to soup and coffee. Don't know where Christmas went. We never had a chance to think about it." The USS Boise CL47 ended up with 13 Battle starsFour Japanese ships sunkSeven aircraft shot down13 landings in Pacific2 in Mediterranean area2 night surface engagements42 months in war area at one time"Only God knows how many men we have killed""I always think that perhaps we could have prevented the whole thing. It we had only got the alarm off Dec. 7th when we saw the Jap fleet headed to Pearl Harbor. Maybe we could have prevented this war. I get real sad about it""If the Boise had made any move that evening, the US fleet would have been destroyed and it would have cost us our lives."
Mr. Fenton also mentions another book called "The Lonely Ships" by Edwin P. Hoyt. that details the battles of the USS Boise.
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